Travel to England and Scotland with obstacles
Journey with Obstacles to England and Scotland ( Voyage à reculons en Angleterre et en Écosse ) is a novel written in 1859 by the French writer Jules Verne , which was published 130 years later, in 1989, by Le Cherche midi éditeur. The German translation by Elisabeth Edl was published by Paul Zsolnay Verlag in 1997 .
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The two Parisians Jacques Lavaret and Jonathan Savournon are given two free ship passages from France to Liverpool . Enthusiastic they make their way to Saint-Nazaire , where they want to catch the steamship Hamburg . Once there, they learn that the Hamburg will not call at Saint-Nazaire, but Bordeaux . The journey to the north of England first takes you far to the south of France. The arrival of the ship in Bordeaux is delayed and the time available to them is noticeably shrinking. When it finally arrives and they reach Liverpool after four days on the Atlantic, they only have one week left for their trip to Scotland. By train it goes to Edinburgh . There they visit distant relatives of Savournons, who show them or recommend various sights. You will sail the Firth of Forth , Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine , visit Glasgow and Stirling , all in the footsteps of the works of Lavaret's favorite author Walter Scott . Due to his persistent ignorance of the English language, Lavaret repeatedly makes more or less faux pas. On the return journey, London will be visited in a hurry , including a Macbeth performance and a visit to Madame Tussauds .
In the end the conclusion is: "You touched everything, but in truth you saw nothing!"
background
In the summer of 1859, Jules Verne went on a trip to Scotland with the composer Aristide Hignard , for whose operas he wrote libretti. He processed this journey into his first novel with himself as Jacques Lavaret and Hignard as Jonathan Savournon . The novel was rejected by its publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel and published Five Weeks in the Balloon as Verne's first novel. The novel remained unpublished during Verne's lifetime, he only used individual parts in the novels Black India and The Green Ray set in Scotland . Verne's city of birth, Nantes , acquired the manuscript for 6 million francs from the estate in 1981, and in 1989 the journey with obstacles was published in France.
Verne's literary role models can be recognized in Reise mit Obstacles , such as Charles Nodier and above all Walter Scott , who are mentioned by name in the novel, or Charles Dickens in describing the misery in Liverpool, and James Fenimore Cooper in describing the Scottish seascape. The novels of the Voyages extraordinaires often focus on new or future technologies, here it is a new species of man - the tourist.
Bibliography (selection)
- Jules Verne: Journey with obstacles to England and Scotland (translation: Elisabeth Edl). Vienna: Zsolnay, 1997, ISBN 3-552-04861-8
proof
- ↑ Jules Verne: Journey with Obstacles to England and Scotland. Zsolnay, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-552-04861-8 , p. 235.
- ^ William Butcher: Foreword to the English edition
- ^ Elisabeth Edl in the epilogue to: Jules Verne: Journey with obstacles to England and Scotland. P. 237.
- ^ Afterword, p. 238.
- ^ Afterword, p. 239.